


Fall

by shaenie



Category: LOTR RPS
Genre: Gen, Other, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-30
Updated: 2003-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:18:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/esorlehcar/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/esorlehcar/"><strong>esorlehcar</strong></a> for on-demand beta (she rocks my socks).  <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/megolas/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/megolas/"><strong>megolas</strong></a> bribed me to do it!!! Blame Meg!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/esorlehcar/profile)[**esorlehcar**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/esorlehcar/) for on-demand beta (she rocks my socks). [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/megolas/profile)[**megolas**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/megolas/) bribed me to do it!!! Blame Meg!

"Isn't that enough for one day?" Dom asked, and for some reason he was genuinely nervous. It hardly made sense. Orlando had jumped four times already; chances were that one more time wouldn't make a difference.

"Just once more," Orlando said vaguely, staring down past the toes of his battered trainers at the expanse of empty nothing below him.

Dom avoided looking down, and avoided looking directly at Orlando as well. Orlando was creeping him out. That was what it boiled down to. Orlando wasn't acting like Orlando at all. Orlando wasn't bouncing or buzzing or laughing or just behaving like a nutter in general. Orlando was quiet, contained. Instead of a crackling ball of energy that lashed out and infected anyone nearby, Orlando felt like a black hole of calm, sucking all the calm around him into himself, leaving anxiety and dread in its place.

Dom's stomach was rolling with nerves and there was a taste like raw flesh on the back of his tongue. He felt ill and unhappy and afraid, and he didn't know why. The other jumpers had all backed off by now, a little knot of people that had arrived just as Orlando was being hooked up this last time. Now they were in a clump at the railing, as far as possible from Orlando. None of them looked all that keen to jump, now, though they had been wild with fearful laughter and manic excitement when they had arrived five minutes before. Even the guy hooking Orlando up to the harness looked too pale, and his hands were shaking slightly.

"Orlando," Dom said, and Orlando turned slowly to look at him. The shadows on his face concealed his eyes, deepened them into vast, empty sockets. Dom steeled himself not to take a step backward, but his mouth was too dry to formulate the objection he'd been thinking of.

"It's okay, Dom," Orlando said, not smiling. His face was tipped slightly forward, and his eyes looked like endless wells of darkness. _Black holes_ , Dom thought, and couldn't help but shiver a little. "It's perfectly safe."

Dom just nodded, because his throat was too constricted to allow sound to pass.

Orlando turned back to watch the attendant fastening the harness again. Dom took advantage of his inattention to walk away a few steps. Back away, actually, because he couldn't quite bring himself to turn his back on Orlando. It was stupid, Orlando was about as dangerous as an overlarge puppy, but there it was.

He was scared. There was something very, very fucking scary about Orlando right now. His hands were beset with tiny tremors, his palms were damp, and sweat was prickling uncomfortably at all of his vulnerable places, the back of his neck, underarms, belly, the backs of his knees. All the places for which a predator might lunge, to weaken and disable.

He didn't look when Orlando jumped. He didn't believe in clairvoyance or precognition, he didn't believe in getting a 'bad feeling' before something horrific like a plane crash or a house fire, but he didn't look. Just in case.

**

"There are only two ways to get down," Billy mused, staring at the ravine in front of them. "Fall or fly."

Behind Dom, Orlando chuckled. It made the back of Dom's neck prickle uneasily, and he shifted.

"You're shitting me, right?" Elijah asked, gazing fixedly into the apparently bottomless crevice. He didn't seem to be able to draw his eyes away from it.

"No," Billy said. "It's too narrow at the bottom to land anything down there, and the sides are straight up and down. It's lined with crystals and mineral deposits and if you try to rappel down, it'll cut up your ropes. I heard somebody kills themselves every few years or so, trying to get down."

The skin between Dom's shoulder blades was positively crawling now. He turned and glanced at Orlando (even though the truth was, he didn't want to see Orlando's face like it had been that one time ever _ever_ again), but Orlando was occupied with the crevice. He sidled over to the edge and kicked at the gravelly soil there.

Elijah let out a startled cry as a few inches of soil broke loose from the lip and showered down, making tiny, rattling noises, like pattering rain, as it bounced off the sides of the ravine. Billy grabbed Elijah and hauled him slowly backward. Though Elijah was far enough back not to be in any real danger, he looked to be rooted to the spot with fear.

Dom was looking at Orlando's face, however, and just not liking what he was seeing there. Orlando was still gazing down, still smiling softly, but it was just like before. There was something subtly off about that expression, something very slightly wrong. Dom couldn't articulate what it was, couldn't put it into any kind of terms his mind would accept. Just that it was creepy, spooky as fuck, _not_ right, not _good._ It made Dom's skin want to crawl right off his body.

Part of him wanted to see Orlando's eyes, wanted to see what sort of look was in them, and maybe that would explain what this creepiness was all about, but part of him -- _most_ of him -- was adamantly opposed to getting anywhere near Orlando.

Because most of him was convinced -- irrationally, Dom knew this, but couldn't shake the conviction -- that if he moved closer and tried to get a better angle on Orlando's face, nothing would change.

Orlando's eyes would still be lost in shadow, because Orlando's eyes were nothing _but_ shadow. Orlando didn't have eyes. Orlando's eyes were just holes in his head, from which the darkness inside of him oozed out.

"But they've sent something down, right?" Dom heard himself asking, and his voice sounded weirdly nervous and husky in his own ears. "Cameras or something? To see what's down there? Those little indestructible remote controlled robots, like on the science programs?"

Billy snorted. "Nah. This is New Zealand, Dom. There are scads of places no one has ever been. This is just one of hundreds, and I'll bet it's pretty low on the list. There's nothing down there but a few dead bodies. It's not even wide enough for a river."

"Maybe it has it's own ecosystem," Orlando said dreamily, and he was crouching down now, right on the very edge, toes poking out into nothing, elbows resting on his knees. He was rocking very slightly, and Dom's heart was suddenly pounding in his chest with frantic wingbeats, like trapped birds. "Like those isolated valleys in Africa and South America that are totally encapsulated, unreachable except by air. Animals man has never seen before, plants that don't need the sun to grow. Something completely foreign, completely separate. Yeah."

Dom looked at Billy, whose eyes were wide and fixed on Orlando. No help there. And if anything, Elijah looked even worse, dead frozen.

"Hey, Orli," Dom mumbled casually. "Can I drive your Jeep on the way back?"

Orlando shot to his feet, and for a moment, Dom couldn't breath, sure -- dead motherfucking positive -- that Orlando was going to go head first over the edge.

Instead, he stepped back casually, as if totally unaware of any danger, and said: "Fuck you, Dommie, you are NOT driving my car."

His eyes were brown, and his grin was wide and perfectly normal.

**

Dom heard Orlando's jeep start, and he didn't have to wonder where he was going.

He knew.

He had a brief inner battle, terror at war with simple love. Orlando was too scary just lately, Dom didn't want to know anything about this little foray Orlando was making, didn't want to be in any way part of it. He was sweating just thinking about facing Orlando when Orlando's eyes were lost in shadows and Orlando's voice was calm and soft and hypnotic.

But Orlando had been so fucking weird, so fucking off. Dom had no idea what he would do, really, no fucking idea, and if Dom didn't go, didn't try, what if Orlando hurt himself?

What if Orlando killed himself?

The jumping thing -- the fixation, the addiction, the need -- wasn't new, but it seemed different somehow. It seemed like there was something new about what drove Orlando to it. Something terrifying.

Dom scrambled out of the tent, snagging a t-shirt from the end of his sleeping bag and pulling it over his head as he ran for Orlando's Jeep. He was barefoot, but fuck it.

He didn't bother to ask, just thumbed open the passenger side door and slid into the seat beside Orlando. "Where you going, Orli?" he asked, breathless from running, and from the constricting band of dread that seemed to be tightening slowly around his chest. When Orlando didn't answer, Dom made himself turn and look at him.

Orlando's eyes were clearly visible in the moonlight from the windshield. They were brown, they were normal, and Dom didn't know how to measure relief that was as huge as what he felt at seeing them.

"Falling used to be the thing I was most afraid of in the world," Orlando said, his tone almost conversational. "And I couldn't get over it. I tried. I jumped off of things, out of helicopters, I jumped and jumped, but I couldn't conquer it. Not that way."

Orlando turned to face the windshield and put the jeep into gear.

"Orlando?" Dom asked, and his heart was doing that thing again, battering at his ribcage like it was trying to escape, like a bird caught inside a building, fluttering and senseless.

But Orlando didn't answer, he just drove.

The crevice wasn't that far off. They were there in less than ten minutes.

Dom spent the time trying to think of what to say, and coming to realize that sometimes there just weren't any words.

He didn't find words until Orlando stopped. The lip of the crevice was visible ahead of them in the beams of the Jeep's headlamps, a yellow triangle that sliced through the darkness and drew tiny, winged things to batter against them like Dom's heart was battering at the inside of his chest. He wondered if it was possible for his heart to bruise itself, doing that.

"You're scaring me," he said, and didn't look at Orlando.

"I know," Orlando said, and got out of the Jeep.

Dom followed. What else was he going to do?

He stood beside Orlando at the edge of the ravine. It disappeared into utter darkness after only a little way. The moonlight came at an angle that didn't help illuminate its depths.

"It'll be all right, though," Orlando said. "I can't fall. I can't ever fall again."

Dom's mouth was drier than paper, drier than ash. "What does that mean?" he somehow managed to ask, and his voice sounded dull and grey and weak.

When Orlando looked at him, his eyes were gone, shadow-eyes, holes, windows into something Dom didn't want to see into, but couldn't look away from.

 _It's just the angle of the light, it's just the moonlight_ , his mind babbled, but it wasn't. Dom knew it. Even if it _was,_ it wasn't. It was _real;_ it was what was really there, even if Dom was only seeing it because of some kind of shadowy illusion.

"Exactly what it sounds like," Orlando said, and he was smiling, but there was nothing like amusement in his voice. His voice was bitter. "I can't fall. But you know that thing everyone says? That… thing, that 'be careful what you wish for' thing?"

He laughed, and it was sepulchral.

Dom shuddered.

"You ever wondered what it's like to fly, Dom?" Orlando's eyes, pools of black nothing in his face -- and it couldn't be the light, because the light made his cheekbones high and fine and beautiful, and should have been glittering in his eyes -- were fixed on Dom's face, and how they could be both dull and piercing, Dom didn't know. But, oh, they were, and fear was battling with some kind of sympathetic pain. Orlando looked utterly miserable, utterly desolate. "If you ever make wishes, you have to think them through. That's the thing. I didn't think it through."

"What are you talking about?" Dom whispered. He'd never been so afraid to hear an answer in his entire life.

"Him," Orlando said, and grinned. It made his face skull-like in the moonlight. "He gave me wings, so I would never fall."

Dom blinked at him. The words refused to resolve into something sensible in his mind. "Who?"

Orlando didn't answer. "So I had to try them, of course. I had to. And Dom, Dommie, oh, Dommie, I flew." Orlando spread his arms and turned his face up to the sky. "I flew. But… Dom. He had wings, too, when He fell. He knew, He knows what it means, to fly and fall." Orlando's voice was soft and sly and crafty, and cold fingers crept along Dom's spine, lingered at the small of his back. "And He wants nothing more than to climb back up to the high places, to soar in the vaults of the sky."

Dom watched Orlando tug his t-shirt over his head and drop it carelessly at his feet. Orlando was staring at the sky.

"Flying is like a drug," Orlando said, and the cool, crisp texture of his voice made Dom wince, almost flinch, because this was not Orlando, this creature, this eyeless _thing._ Orlando was warmth and light and joy, and this thing, this hollow-voiced, skull-faced _thing_ was dark, too dark to be Orlando.

"Orlando," Dom whispered, his voice too tight for anything louder, and it was barely a sound in the still air.

"I have to fly," Orlando sing-songed. He sounded like a creepy child in old horror movies, the kind of movies that had always left Dom hyper-alert and covered in stinking fear-sweat. "I have to fall to fly."

And before Dom could so much as move, Orlando was gone, over the edge and gone, jesusfuck, gone down into the dark of the ravine, and Dom was on his belly at the lip without knowing how he'd gotten there, eyes straining, hands reaching for nothing. He screamed Orlando's name into the shadows, and it echoed back to him, along with a sound that he first took for his own heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears, but that lasted mere moments, because he could hear Orlando _laughing,_ hear that high and manic sound that he'd recognize anywhere as the sound of Orlando's joy.

Orlando exploded up and past him, too fast for anything but a fleeting glimpse as Dom threw himself backward, away from the precarious edge he was sprawled over, and all Dom registered was something huge and blacker than the shadow around it. Wind sliced at him, sending loose, gravelly soil into a frenzy around him, and Dom ignored it, just stared upward, just stared at Orlando, at Orlando, at Orlando's _wings..._

Huge, they were huge, four or five times Orlando's height while stretched out across the immense New Zealand sky, blotting out stars in swaths, a deeper black against the indigo of the sky, and even the stars seemed dimmer, somehow, around them. They made a sound like thunder when he beat them against the sky, and they were bare of feathers. Not bird wings, no, not these, but bat wings, wings like leather, dragon wings, _demon_ wings.

Dom heard himself speaking -- no, not speaking, but _praying_ \-- in German, the first language to come to his tongue in the maelstrom of his terror and exaltation. He had to close his eyes, finally, had to look away from Orlando in the sky. He couldn't take it, couldn't stand seeing him -- it -- what in God's name was he supposed to _call_ this thing? _Not Orlando, never, not Orlando, please God, it's not, please!_

He didn't open them when he heard Orlando land, the sound of his feet touching the ground bizarrely light, because those wings were huge, fucking enormous, and just to lift Orlando off the ground they had to be muscular, heavy, weighty, and it should be louder when he landed. It should be the sound of the earth cracking under the weight of the impossible.

"They're gone, Dom," Orlando said eventually, and his voice was hoarse and broken, but definitely Orlando. "They're gone the instant my feet touch the ground. Every time."

Dom opened his eyes. It was true. Orlando's chest was bare, and there were no wings stretching out from between his shoulder blades, no wings to cast living black shadows on the ground. Orlando was just Orlando.

Except Orlando looked weary and sick and desperate.

Dom didn't know what to say. There was no need to ask how it had happened; Dom had a fairly clear idea. Some things you couldn't see, couldn't witness, without understanding them somewhere so deep and basic it was like inborn knowledge, instinctive and integral.

Dom knew _how_ it had happened.

"Why?" he asked instead, and his voice was hoarse as well, and he realized that he hadn't just been _speaking_ the Lord's Prayer in German, he had been _screaming_ it.

"He said I would never fall," Orlando said simply, and his eyes were brown and glittering. "But I do, Dom. Every time I use them. I fall."

Dom nodded. Of course he fell. Of course.

And when Orlando fell to his knees beside him, Dom held him while he wept bitterly, feeling the smooth skin of Orlando's back under his hands, and pretending that was all that was there.


End file.
